What is hard is not knowing if the things happening are lessons from darkness or light.

The most empty would be if these experiences were from neither.

But i believe in the Light, and unfortunately that means there is dark too.

I keep asking the Light, “How do I make this story yours?”

And maybe I’m just not there yet because I still think there’s something – I – can do to make it be so. The thing is, I’m pretty sure this story being His won’t have a whole lot to do with me at all.

I’m just living. I was put here to live. What if God simply put me here to live and breathe and just by living and breathing this story was His (or Hers…I am unsure about the gender thing with God and how that can be and such. What if God was a Her to me? Would She love me? Could a “Her” love me? Why don’t we come up with something better than Him or Her…I say Light…no gender and all genders.)

Something happened to me this afternoon that I don’t know how to put words to. At least not yet. And maybe a way I can gauge if something is from Darkness or Light would be if I’m able to talk about it, specifically. And maybe there are things from the Light that are just too awe inspiring for words, but it would leave me so lifted up so that there would be no question it was from the Light. The Darkness is so tricky. It’s nasty and devious and makes itself so confusing.

The Darkness leaves me jumbled and in pain.

The Light leaves me clear and energized.

The Darkness is confusing no matter how I try to make sense of it.

The Light just falls together even if I can find no reason that it would at all.

There is Darkness and Light. Right now they are both in my life. Battling. It is scary to be a breathing thing with this war. It is everywhere I go. It is in every relationship. Every doorway. The battle is scary to behold, to breathe through, to contain.

I pray that the darkness would see fit to leave soon. It is fighting hard.

It makes it so it is hard to call out to the Light. It makes it so dark and overtaking.

I have to keep calling and calling on the Light.

That is how the Light is. It is always there for you, but it doesn’t take control. The Darkness is always there. It’s disrespectful. It will do its work without asking or being asked. It barges in. It wrecks everything in its path to get at what it wants in you or out of you.

The Light…the Light is merely present and waiting on you. Like a Servant.

The Light teaches me to wait. The Light teaches me to be patient and the Light teaches me how to have an inward strength, even when I am demoralized and ransacked by Darkness.

The Darkness is immature. The Darkness wears costumes. It hates itself so much it can’t just be who/what it is. It has to disguise itself as something entirely -not- itself…As Light.

Darkness is an imposture .

Light is genuine.

Light does not have to fight itself.

Light sets me free.

Darkness, I see you for you. You may win for a while.But I’ve given my heart, my every everything to Light.

I have done so much investigating of the body in the last 5 years, I’d think I would have it a little more under control. But that’s the very problem…Control.

Trauma.

I know what has set off the most recent psoas tantrum is riding in a car in a seated and restricted position for 4 days. But if this were the only cause then why isn’t my husband’s psoas complaining…or for that matter, my daughters? We were all sitting the same amount of time and in relatively the same position.

Yet, it is me who experiences this intense and demanding pain.

Trauma.

It leaves me to question as I have questioned for many years now.

Psoas pain is deep, gripping and unrelenting once activated. It can effect the entire being on every level.

Trauma.

I seem to go in circles with pain issues. It’s chronic at this point, but the circles are sometimes more broad and spacious and encompass a set range of symptoms at some times more than others.

The pain circles can be tight, almost like a weaving thread-a fine thread and needle. Intricate, defined, and acute. Other times it is thin and constricting like a binding that covers any given area. And still yet, other times it is thick and suffocating like a blanket, but without the softness or comfort.

I began researching the body, it’s structure, and body/mind responses in 2008, not long after a series of assaults I experienced.

Mostly, I have books I haven’t really been able to read. My body has the answers and I’m afraid to have them confirmed. As long as I don’t have them confirmed from another source I have the magical, false belief that I can make my body change first, and later validation of the truth won’t hurt so much?

Just before the pain, which I still experience 5 years later, I had been frozen. I am not sure if I had ever been “not frozen,” even prior to the assaults in recent years. I think I have probably been frozen, in some ways, from sometime near birth. And though it sounds fantastical I sometimes have to wonder if it wasn’t closer to a time between conception and my real first breath. Because there has never been a time in my history that stress and trauma of some sort was not surrounding my existence.

(It’s funny I used to become enraged if someone suggested I’d ever experienced trauma.)

The first time I actually felt pain was deafening. It was some time in 2008.

I had met pain before that, but I had only really known pain as a word. Not as a felt experience. Even if I had felt it before it was on a much more cognitive level.

Then the floodgates of hell unleashed its fury on me.

I was 28, in massage school and couldn’t walk. However, I did walk. I had to walk. I had to get from place to place. I couldn’t just not do it. My body couldn’t do it, but I had to do it. Somehow I did it. I didn’t miss school. I didn’t fall behind. I graduated with honors. Some people in my class probably didn’t even know I was in immobilizing pain. In fact, most of them didn’t, I’m sure now. ( In hindsight, some people probably thought the scowl on my face was because I was a very angry person. I’m not and wasn’t. I now recognize that wrote expression my “determined to be happy” look so nobody would know anything was wrong, lol)

But the pain changed me. It continues to “F” with me, if you know what I mean.

I have had some breaks with it during short spans since it first came on, but only briefly and to seemingly regain strength at the next intersection. And the pain moves around my body. First, and always, my spine, but it seems to like to “specialize” on one or two areas and then move on. But it always returns to where it has been before. It is the circle.

However, I’m most interested in pains ability to evermore find new spots and new ways to impact me! Truly ingenious.

So, I’m reaching a new level with pain and the amount of joy I am seeking to tap into.

I need freedom.

In the past years I’ve developed ways to deal with the pain. Some of them are old, adaptive, and until recently, dependable, like dissociation. I know that I don’t actually even hold all the pain myself. But then there is the “learning sickness” I carry (sometimes dormant) that takes hold of me. I have a shelf of books dedicated to the mysteries of pain, it’s origin and release. I am always looking for connection. I think this unrelenting wish for connection might, in fact, be part of why the pain does not dissipate.

I’m not ready to talk yet about this pain. Even if I’ve written an entire page about it.

Pain has so many stories to tell.

(What if I told?)

I’m often left without words. The words are buried within the tissue of my body and my soul. Yesterday I spoke of the landfill…and I’m afraid that land is actually my body.

Things ( It’s not “things” and it’s not “nothing.” It’s trauma. Will it kill me to accept it? ) have happened to me on a cellular level. That might be part of why I am inclined to believe that pain and trauma is so woven into me it is deeper than even my breath. It is before breath.

There is an interplay between my body and the release of words, the stories of my life. I just pray to be released from its cycling, a sort of constant repetition compulsion, and to live through the release.

I think this deepness is why I feel such a need on my most real level to “merely” sit together with another human who isn’t going to hurt me in any way. It’s unexplainable the effect that has on me. I have been to many professionals in search of help who have tried to make me jump through hoops for a cure.

Very few people have worked to cultivate the presence of mind and body to do absolutely nothing. I have finally met someone in my life with the courage to do that.

Nothing isworking.

Nothing is real.

Nothing is everything.

Nothing is simple and inherently complex.

Maybe it’s time for me to do something toward that effort too.

(Expect more posts about my personal research and investigations as I begin to crack those books and practice the connection/release exercises I’ve known about for a while. )

And there is a little bit in the rebellion that I like and am afraid to lose. But it’s like this rebellion wants to be let loose to live, and I’m afraid because I don’t know what the rebellion is against.

Does rebellion have to be against something?

Or maybe it can be for something?

I’m not sure right now. All I do is watch the feeling rise. I see it, smell it, hear it. I sense it.

I feel like a baby exploring it. Putting it in my mouth and seeing what happens.

Will this rebellion get me in trouble? Will it hurt me? Is it going to be taken away? Is it mine?

What do I do with this?

Oh, “Feel it,” you say?

Feeling rebellion rise inside of you when you are a married mother of a teenager and baby is interesting stuff.

Great.

I think I was about to enter into my “teens” when I had my baby almost 9 months ago. I didn’t think I was going to ever have another child. I always wanted to have another child all those 12 years before I became pregnant again, but I didn’t think it would actually come to be.

And then, there I was, baby-making.

Sometimes, even though it’s heading toward a year postpartum I still look at this Being that’s been created and wonder how in the world she is in my house, with me…and….she’s got me in her…or she’s in me…or….well, definitely we are related…and by blood!

How did this happen?

This weekend I started to feel a new bond with her. I had some of those moments where I thought and felt, “Wow, this baby is my daughter!” It was exciting and gave me a big rush. “Wow, I really have another daughter. There’s this baby in my arms and I inexplicably love her.”

I started to get excited about the years to come. About being “Mom.”

Yes, I am capable of this. “Yes, yes, yes,” I assure myself.

Down every line of writing it feels like there are 10 or more stories I could really tell behind it. So much to open up, but then I know it unfolds, unwinds, and like a scene from one of those movies where the book is opened and the story becomes multi-dimensional, so goes the story of this motherhood.

I would need weeks and weeks to tell this story. How long would it take? How much time would I have to take off from my daily duties to get it told?

I sit here and my advanced crawler climbs to pull up on the chair I am sitting in.

“Not now.” That’s what I’m always telling myself. “No, not now.”

I’m not sure when. Of anything in the world I would ever have or do for myself it would be to get the stories out. I know it seems repetitive and boring on the day-to-day basis of this blog, but there’s a lot of content buried deep.

The bits that get written about are the crumbling pieces on a mound that reaches up like a mountain. I’m hopeful that in reality it’s not like a landfill that’s gotten covered up. But in a way, I’m afraid maybe my stories are a little like that. At least, that’s how they’ve been treated by me. It’s like I grab every piece I can these days and write about it, no matter what it is, just so it doesn’t get added to the pile. Even if it really is trash, lol. I figure I can discard it later if it’s nothing.

I guess those buried stories have found some safety in the garbage heap. And now that the holes in my earth have been filled and dirt has covered them I’m a little uneasy about digging down, even though there are things still breathing in there.

Should I let them die? Should they decompose where they are? Didn’t I never really need them though?

I see this little girl-me sitting on top of this covered landfill now, crying, because her whole life is buried in there. And to the whole world it’s just trash.

And the world I’m speaking of has been created by the other parts of herself (myself) that have gone on to exist without history.

They (I) want it this way. They’re (I’m) afraid to find out they’re (I’m) made up of garbage.

Well, I just don’t know. I really just don’t know. If I don’t die first I think there might be an uprising. And maybe this is the rebellion I’m feeling.

It’s this internal war, this push and shove between who I am and who I am afraid of–myself.

Something has brought me to this place…I don’t know exactly what it is.

I didn’t know what I was asking for. I didn’t know this Listening and Responding Experiment would really come to meet me where I am.

While yesterday was all about the physical, today has taken me to the other side.

I had brunch with one of my best friends today. We’ve been friends since we were teenagers. We were in each other’s weddings. We’ve often lived parallel lives. And today, our conversation turned to God.

I’m a little funny about sharing intimate conversations in a blog, so I’m keeping this post mostly about me and where I am on this God Journey, but I don’t really believe anyone is ever on a God Journey alone. God is about relationship. It’s all about relationship. And I thank God for my friend.

God/The Light becomes more real to me the more I am in relationship. It’s funny how in the light I see so much better. Not just things, but people, are becoming more vibrant. And I really do have some amazingly beautiful friends.

Today I listened to myself as I responded to the question, “What do you think about God?”

It was definitely different to hear myself speak. It was different to have substance behind my thoughts about God. Maybe it is because God has so much more substance to me now.

So what do I think about God?

I can’t explain it. This is going to sound a little crazy. That’s what I told my friend. I told her I don’t know and that I don’t have the answers. I only know what’s happened in my life since I hit rock bottom of my darkest abyss and God was the only one with the power to save me from myself. (Let me clarify, not dogma…God. At no time in the course of recent events has anybody preached to me or even said a word about God.)

My response about God/The Light started when I was in the dark. I told my friend today, for the first time, about how I met my end (and beginning) just a couple of months ago when I was starting this blog.

I was dead. My breath had crossed the last page. I knew that it was really over and that nobody and no hospital or earthly intervention could keep me from stealing away my life. The struggle was over. Darkness became a deceptive friend, soon the only friend I felt safe enough to talk to anymore. And knew it didn’t matter what my therapist did as a therapist or how long a hospital might detain me.

The day came when the end was through with waiting in me.

My final gasp came and to the horror of darkness my dying breath called for prayer.( Maybe that one last dying breath left to use was the first breath that came into me when I was born?) I knew it was going to take a miracle to get me out, even if I still didn’t want to admit to believing in miracles. And then things started to turn around. That’s the sort of mystery part. But the miracle part is when I started letting my will go I realized that I didn’t have to fight this life anymore and could let all the struggle for control leave my body. The deception of the darkness I was in was that I was in control of everything to my final end. But in the turnaround of reaching out for prayer on my behalf (because I felt too worthless and ashamed to pray for myself, yet believed in the fight for light,) I learned I could fly. Peace and Light was alive and well, and I could have it too. I was free and it wasn’t all about me anymore. This life was mine to live, not to end. There was something so much bigger going on and all I had to really do was be present-be willing to be part of the story that is so much bigger than myself. It is really the first taste of fulfillment I’ve ever had.

The deadened pieces of me started waking up. I continue to feel the fog lift.

It didn’t happen all in one day. I’m still being transformed. I still don’t have all the answers. I don’t know everything about God (I mostly know that I don’t know, but like what I’ve experienced so far,) and Lord knows I hope I don’t know anything close to everything anytime soon because now I want to be on this earthly ground for a lot longer! When I hear the question, “What do you think about God?” as in…”Is he there…and what’s his deal if he is?” My true response is really just Awe and excitement about still being here to learn more…and any words that come out are really just me trying to regain my composure. It’s the most beautiful gift in the world. That’s what life is. That is where God is.

It’s no wonder that I couldn’t imagine living anymore without the light on.

This is the condensed version of this life affirming afternoon I got to spend in the presence of my beautiful friend listening and responding/responding and listening. We spent two and a half hours digesting life, omelets and God together….Day 3 will certainly have some big boots to fill!

If I’m honest, there is a lot I haven’t told about yet because it feels like I can’t tell about it. I wonder all the many wonders of this world. Will I be believed? But even more, what will happen if I open this up into my consciousness? Will I be able to accept it myself? What will happen if this “thing” I am keeping in the dark becomes exposed and everybody sees it, especially me? Am I grounded enough? Can I handle this?

At this point in my life I am moving on from so much in my past, but certain things are like tar and never really wear off. Even when it looks like it is off, the residue remains and invisible damage is done to the under-surface that makes it more vulnerable than the untouched spots. I don’t really know that much about tar, but I know a lot about being hurt so if I’m wrong about the effect tar has on what it touches I’m pretty sure I can personally attest to tar on the brain…and the heart. It does not belong there. It can neither get there or be removed without some kind of process.

I don’t know if I can find the words to stop speaking in weak and distant metaphors. I can speak in “as ifs” but not in “as it was/is”. I’ve come through some exceptionally bad times. Bad things. Things that have altered every cell of my being. I have feelings about this, but I keep them contained out of fear….fear like terror. And the mere containment of it changes my chemistry too. I am not free.

I want freedom. I want to have the freedom to speak. The freedom to speak, to breathe. I am holding my breath. I do not have life, at least not my life. My energy swirls wildly within me and rips me apart. On the outside there is chronic pain, but the pain on the inside eats me alive. It’s no mystery to me why inflammation governs me. I laugh and I play, and sometimes the inflammation abates…but only to grow stronger. Always stronger on the comeback.

Where will I put my story? In therapy? With my friends? Handed to my husband? Will my children inherit it on silent pieces of paper when I pass on?

OR WILL I BROADCAST IT TO THE WORLD BECAUSE IT HAS ALL BEEN TOO MUCH.

Who will listen? Will nobody listen? Who will care?

I WILL CARE.

And I will tell enough people until enough people care and the bits of me can begin to let go.

I was not born for nothing.

I can make art and bake cakes and sit in silence and meditate. I can fill my soul with happy thoughts and no thoughts at all…but my soul will not quit screaming.

I will not stop. Why?

Because I choose to not stop.

Why?

Because I didn’t deserve what I got. I didn’t deserve the irreparable damage.

And I’ve got all these questions and thoughts that swirl and swirl and swirl in the tornado of my life and one day I’ll die. And I will not die for nothing.

Because I’m human. Because I feel.

Because my soul was skinned from my flesh…AND I DID NOT SAY IT WAS OK.

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